Hatesphere

support Mevadio + Dawn of Demise
author AP date 22/09/06 venue The Rock, Copenhagen, DEN

September 22nd, 2006 reflected an utterly unimportant date for six billion people, minus the turnout for Hatesphere's Copenhagen round at The Rock. It was also my birthday. Hatesphere’s gift to me was what I like to call a pretty good effort at performing the perfect live show. The support bands deserve no more than an extended thank you for a severely prolonged three-hour masturbation of substandard, painfully nothing-saying music.

The show was set to start at nine; with Mevadio establishing the mood (though this turned out to be quite counterproductive) so turning up at eight had few advantages. But I did get a Hatesphere t-shirt, which I believed to contain the word “Fråd” (Danish for “eat”) in big, cheesy gothic letters. To my disappointment, it says “Tråd” (I still don’t exactly grasp what this means, but it is relevant to guitar and heavy metal). At this point I should also express my gratitude to Piotr (whom some of you may remember from the Darkest Hour moshpit at Malmö festival last year) for lending his camera out for our purposes, and for the pleasure of the readers that are indifferent to the rant that this review mainly consists of. I should also express my gratitude to him for losing a chord, leaving for Ireland, and leaving me with no pictures. Now you will actually have to read this review. I’m happy; you’re not.

I already made an attempt at beginning the Mevadio review, but lost track after one sentence, so I will try again. To recap, Mevadio failed at establishing the mood and inspired very few spectators to abandon their tables and beers and watch the band. Mevadio were apparently under the impression that their task was to play a full set, ignoring the “support” part of “support band”. They came, they warmed up and they bored. Only a single song erected some hope, “Through the Eyes of a Crooner”, and this seemed to be the only song that anyone in the audience was familiar with. But people hadn’t come to see Mevadio, so the band is excused. Excused but not redeemed; I refuse to indulge myself in the specifics of their set, positive and negative, the prior of which is finger-countable by two hands and the latter of which isn’t. Mevadio was as close to the wrong choice for a support band as possible.

4

Dawn of Demise was the second support band, and drew inspiration from Mevadio’s performance in that they too played an excessively long set. I have to say I’m not familiar with the band, but I also have to say that I’m glad I’m not. I must extend some respect to the band’s amazing lead guitarist for technically impressive solo work. This, however, was much of what the band had going for itself. The live performance was dull and static. The headbanging of the lead singer appeared as though it was in slow motion (this might be a characteristic of the genre, so don’t lynch me for pointing it out as a negative) and inspired more laughs than headbanging in the audience. These laughs I, and several other observers, shared with Peter Lyse Hansen on the balcony. Dawn of Demise still tramped on Mevadio.

5

I am a devoted fan of Hatesphere; so seeing Pepe in the crowd of course meant I had to talk to him. Here is how the conversation proceeded:

“Hey man!”

”What?”

”Hey man, I’m from rockfreaks!”

“What? Huh?”

”Yeah, we interviewed you at Roskilde Festival, remember?”

”Ahh, yeah! Cool.”

”Cool.”

With this convincing dialogue, I invite you readers to brace yourself for an interview I will be carrying out with Dragonforce along with Tim later this month.

Fishing for the thread again, Hatesphere’s set began a sweaty and exhausting three hours of anxious waiting (airconditioning is a foreign concept at The Rock). “Åhh nej, nu igen?” (”Oh no, not again?”) is a well-earned tour title with the amount of live shows this band plays in a year, and the amount of live shows this band plays is a well-earned reality, maintained by this band’s incredible showmanship. A band playing hardcore death thrash with huge grins on their face: what could be better? Jacob Bredahl is a true entertainer with his Jydsk dialect, cruel jokes about Lorte-Mads’ (a rowdy) incapacity to set the microphones right, and his stoner-resembling face-expression. Whether or not it was inspired by the crowd’s demands for the band to play faster that the band concentrated its powers on playing the fastest and most hardcore songs from their discography, I don’t know, but it worked. One and a half hours of merciless, ear-splitting hardcore required the guards to issue numerous warnings to numerous people. Jacob’s request, “Let me see some blood!”, halfway through the show conjured up a priceless expression on the guard’s face, and the signs visible around the club stating “No moshing! No stage diving!” were hopelessly ignored. But what did they expect from a concert like this? After the one and a half hours, shattered glass was interfering with walking on the floor; grease induced from the hair of the heavy metal guy in front of me (and this was hair down past his better face) littered my face and the wet spots under my arm pits had spread and claimed victory over my Unearth t-shirt. I, for one, left this show extremely satisfied. But I was a live-Hatesphere-virgin.

8

Comments
comments powered by Disqus

Legal

© Copyright MMXXIV Rockfreaks.net.